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GOD'S MERCIES TOWARDS THE NATION. 

A. SERMON, 

u V 

THE REV, MORGAN DIX, A. M. 






God's Mercies towards the Nation. 



A SERMON, 



PREACHED IN SAINT PAUL'S CHAPEL, NEW YORK, 



THANKSGIVING DAY, 1861. 



REV. MORGAN DIX, A M., 

ii. 



ASSISTANT HECTOR OF TRINITY CUUECII. 



NEW YORK : 

F. J. HUNTINGTON, BEEKMAN STREET. 

MASON BROTHERS, MERCER STREET. 

1861. 




.0 



(A 



The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the 

EVERLASTING ARMS. Deut. XXxiii. 27. 



f «l«oa 



SERMON 



How long is it, brethren, since last we kept 
Thanksgiving Day ? How long, how much have we 
lived meanwhile ? Yon talk of a twelvemonth ; but 
do you not rather mean twelve years ? Have these 
been only months through which we have been pass- 
ing ? Is it but one short year since, as a united peo- 
ple, we gave God thanks for all the blessings of His 
merciful providence ? Is it but seven months since 
the first gun broke the dream, since the first shot 
tore through the line of the nation's quiet and peace- 
able progress % It seems as though one had lived half 
a century, at least, in this short space. It seems as 
though, since last Thanksgiving, our world had been 
turned upside down. We have kept two national 
fasts; we have come through fire and water; we 
have been called to the royal heritage of sorrow ; we 
have been taught as if by briers and thorns; we 
have drained the cup of humiliation in stern, sad 
silence. One need not be ashamed to confess to days 
of concentrated bitterness of soul and spirit as known 
to him, but too well, in these months just gone. One 
need not be ashamed to confess to the having poured 
out the soul in prayer, as it were, "seven times a 
day," for rescue and deliverance from impending 



4 S E E 31 N . 

national death. There have been hours in which all 
seemed, to the inexperienced eye, to have been trem- 
bling on the verge of final and utter loss. One finds 
it hard to describe how these calamities have seemed 
to shape themselves to the consciousness. But if a 
man were to wake in the dead of the night to feel 
the gripe of an enemy at his throat, and discern the 
pale glimmer of the steel near his heart, he would 
know what the nation has felt. And if such a man, 
in such a plight, surprised and set upon, by force 
and arms, being in the peace of the commonwealth, 
and secure in his quiet home, were able, thereupon, 
to rise in the very face of imminent death, and, with 
one tremendous effort, to hurl the murderer back, 
and grapple with him, and strive for life, he would 
know to what kind of a struggle this nation, stupe- 
fied for one instant, has, in another instant, sprung 
afoot. Brethren, when one reflects upon all the peril, 
and all the terror, and all the trial, of these late 
months, one is glad of a thanksgiving day, to pour 
out the gratitude which comes with recovered confi- 
dence and hope. The end is not yet ; but it is as- 
sured. We live. We shall live. God is not dead 
yet. And the nation which God planted here is not, 
we think, dead. It recovers its power; it re-estab- 
lishes its authority; it gathers up its strength; it 
strides on; and it thrusts aside, like rubbish, the 
hindrances and the stumbling-blocks in front. 

This is a day for the people, as such. It is their 
own special holy day. It is not counted in the cal- 
endar of the church catholic; but it is one which 
this nation has piously devoted fco the direct and for- 
mal honour and glory of God. On this day we maj 



SEE M O N . 



speak of the nation's affairs; for since the people 
have agreed to sanctify these hours, their joys and 
their griefs, their successes and their reverses, may 
rightly occupy the thoughts. The preacher speaks 
to you to-day in response to the call of the civil au- 
thorities. He appears to add the solemn sanctions 
of religion to the devout expressions of the public 
sentiment; and if he should formulate the grand 
themes and topics of the public concern into the me- 
dia of some just and suitable expressions, that were 
not to step aside from the path of churchly order and 
propriety. In fact it is of the office of the church to 
set God ever before the people, and to ascribe all 
mercies and benefits to His providence ; to pray for 
the powers that be ; to strengthen the hands in which 
just authority is lodged : to ask of God the victory 
when growing lawlessness stands face to face with 
rightful government; and to sing Te Deum when 
order is re-established, and when the enemies of lib- 
erty are quelled. 

Therefore, if there be any one here present who is 
not grateful to God on a day like this ; or who dis- 
cerns not, in the position of the nation, a ground for 
thankfulness; or who thinks that the ministers of 
religion should not say plainly what they feel, and 
tell the people what they have to be grateful for ; 
such a one is certainly out of place with us just now. 
But as for the congregation at large, they will joy- 
fully acknowledge the duty of the day, and assent to 
the proposed intention of pointing out the character- 
istic and peculiar advantages which, amidst all the 
adverse circumstances of the hour, we still, through 
the favour of Almighty God, are permitted to enjoy. 



6 SERMON. 

One hardly feels like entering upon a formal and 
statistical account of the number of God's benefits to 
us ; and, praised be His holy Name, it were a lengthy 
task, since they are indeed so many. But yet there 
are some which rise at once upon the view, and these 
we may proceed to note before we touch the one 
great subject of which, on a day like this, it were 
idle to suppress the mention. 

And, 1st, we have to thank Him for the recent 
abundant harvests : and especially to remember this, 
that while we are plenteously supplied with the fruits 
of the earth, other parts of the world are in compar- 
ative need of the same. This is indeed a noticeable 
fact, that the want of grain, the first of all wants, 
should, at a moment so critical, make measurably 
dependent upon us the foreign powers with whom it 
is essential now that we should be at peace. God 
has given us enough for ourselves and for them. He 
has set Necessity to watch between us and the other 
side of the world. He has forbidden jealousy to in- 
terfere in this just and righteous quarrel which we 
have with domestic rebellion. 

And, 2dly, we have to thank God for our preserva- 
tion from pestilence and disease, and for the saving 
our homes from fire and sword and the scourge of 
war. The seasons have been fine; the treasure of 
seedtime and harvest, of day and night, has not tailed ; 
we have had no sickness to destroy us at noonday, 
nor evil that walketh in darkness to make us afraid. 
And within our own borders there has been neither 
strife nor battle; the din of arms is heard afar off, 
but we have not felt the shock at home. Wherever 
Loyalty baa held the reins, the people have been at 



SEKM0N. 



peace. Wherever they have remembered the com- 
mand of the Apostle, "Let every soul be subject 
unto the higher powers ;" wherever they have remem- 
bered that " the powers that be are ordained of God ;" 
wherever they have known and acted on the knowl- 
edge that " he that resisteth the power resisteth the 
ordinance of God," there have the people dwelt se- 
curely. So has it been with our State : safe in the 
loyalty whereof she may well be proud. And mean- 
while the wealth of the country has proved adequate 
to her needs thus far, and she has found how vast are 
her resources. And thus far we are at peace with all 
the world; and the parricidal onset against which 
we are striving has not attained to the respect or 
approval of mankind ; it has been viewed with 
doubtfulness, at least, and more commonly with hor- 
ror ; or if it has found sympathy, we trace that sym- 
pathy at once to its source in self-interest, or in the 
fear of our advancing power — there is no moral prin- 
ciple, no basis in conviction of justice and right, at 
the bottom of such sympathy : it is a manifestation 
of self-love. 

But, 3dly, it may be counted as a blessing of the 
times that we have been aroused to the sense of our 
failings — awakened to know our national sins, and to 
bewail them — shaken up from the vile torpor of dull 
material prosperity, from the rut-like tracks of greed, 
gain, ease, sluggish enjoyment. We have been taught 
to deny ourselves — to cut off superfluities — to think 
of something higher than getting wealth — to sacrifice, 
and labor, and pray for others. Let no one be slack 
to confess his errors ; let no people be backward to 
admit their faults. Thus far we have done this 



8 SEEMON. 

bravely. We have not withheld the confession of 
our own mistakes; the worst that could have been 
fairly said about us was said by ourselves. 

We have entered upon a course of the severest 
discipline ; but nothing less severe would have served 
the turn ; we need the rod. If it be in the order of 
God's providence that one great nation shall still 
hold this continent, and be the master and ruler 
thereof, that nation must be trained to the dignity 
and the balance befitting its rightful position. These 
troubles, in their season, will bring their own reward, 
in an elevation of the national character and a puri- 
fication of the whole mass, and a tempering of the 
elements of our composition. And so we shall be 
prepared to wear, without presumption and without 
offence to others, the mantle of that greater power 
which is to come. 

But, brethren, let us advance in thought and 
speech. Not to enlarge, to-day, upon the position of 
the country, would be a kind of solemn affectation. 
The subject which is in every man's thoughts all day 
long, introduces itself without need of apology. 
What shall we say, then, on this our Annual Thanks- 
giving, about the struggle and the conflict in the 
midst of which we are engaged '. What ground or 
gratitude, might some one ask, can be discerned in 
the position in which we are now placed? Why, 
brethr< n, one can hardly be thankful enough, all 
things considered, that this dire battle has com- 
menced, and that we thus far have conducted it in a 
spirit so truly humane, and have sustained in it so 
Little damage. The fury of [\w assault which has 
been made on what may be justly entitled the mild- 



SERMON. 9 

est and most equable of governments — the prodigious 
energy witli which the Constitution, and the laws, 
and the flag, dear to our very hearts, have been set 
upon — these indicate that, one day, the conflict must 
have come. It could never have been avoided. If 
it had not been this year, it must have been ere lono\ 
Nothing has been made clearer by the whole course 
of events than that this terrible collision lay, inevi- 
table and deadly, somewhere in our future; that we 
should have to fight to keep what it cost eight years 
of fighting to gain. Now, that which must come 
had 1 tetter come at once ; we had best have it over 
at once. And no nation could have risen more mag- 
nificently to its work than this. There is not the 
people now on the earth that could have done what 
we have done in so short a space. We have learned, 
in this, the power of our political system — its power 
of self-preservation ; and we have come to know the 
love in which the people hold the heritage given to 
their fathers. And let it not be forgotten that on 
our side the contest has been waged in a spirit of 
forbearance without example. Slow to wrath have 
we been from the outset, and still up to this hour 
slow to wrath. The foreign critic looks upon the 
Government troops and says that they exhibit no 
mndlctiven&ss. This witness is true ; and let us be 
glad that it is so — that the spirit of kindliness toward 
men still triumphs over our abhorrence of their prin- 
ciples. But look upon the work thus far : to what 
does all that has transpired incite the patriot heart, 
if it also be the heart of a Christian, but to profound 
and reverential gratitude to God ? Think but of the 
weakness of the peojxie seven months ago. A gov- 



10 SEEM OX. 

eminent winch seemed to exist but by sufferance and 
in name ; an army of a handful of men ; a navy 
scattered in far-off seas ; a treasury empty ; a people 
distracted and confounded, without a rallying point, 
and bewildered in the search for a place where to 
make a stand ; such a government and such a people, 
surprised in full security, and suddenly confronted 
by the gaunt and ghastly spectres of Insurrection 
and War, stalking up, full-armed, and threatening 
the name, the traditions, the very existence of a grand 
family of the friendly and allied nations of the world : 
is it not a cause of gratitude wdien we see, what we 
have seen, the slow, but sure reconstruction of all 
that seemed lost ; the recovery of the ground, the 
reassertion of right, the daily advance in moral force 
and material strength, and confidence in God and in 
our cause; the one profound movement, stirring all our 
system to its core and its roots, and drawing from 
every point the vitality and the forces needed for the 
long work yet before us? The turning-point is 
passed. But there were those at home who feared, 
and those abroad who predicted, that there would be 
no turning point. Brethren, this has been a resur- 
rection, and from a grave of which Patriotism feared 
and Jealousy hoped that it was closed over and sod- 
ded down forever. But in this resurrection we may 
count some certain faefs, to be established. 1st, that 
the rights of States are not to be regarded henceforth 
when llicy conflict, or seem to conflict with the rights 
and safety of the commonwealth. 2dly, that the 
ruler for whom we have this morning prayed, God's 
servant, the President of the United States, is to be 
the ruler of this whole* land. 3dly, that whatsoever 



SEE MOW. 11 

stands in the way of the government, to hinder, to 
thwart, to resist it, must ultimately fall. And, 4thly, 
that there is such a positive reality as an American 
nation. This is the great and grand benefit out of 
all our trouble, and this were worth that trouble an 
hundred-fold multiplied. "We are not a mere inor- 
ganic cluster of petty tribes, huddled together for a 
time, and liable at any moment to resolve into sepa- 
rate and contemptible individualisms ; but we are 
one people and one nation, and the boundaries which 
separate us are but map-lines and imaginary divis- 
ions — rude water-color marks, which the wet sponge 
will in a moment rub out. "It is this grand truth, 
that we are one nation, and that our history is not 
ended yet, which ought to make the basis of our 
thanksgivings to-day. For, remember, brethren, the 
invariable lesson from all the past. All great nations, 
since the world began, were formed by trial and sor- 
rows, just as all great characters have been formed 
by affliction and adversity. This is the royal heri- 
tage of grief to which we have been called. As 
Christians we dare not quarrel with afflictions, for we 
have been told that whom the Lord loveth He chas- 
teneth, and scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. 
Surely it is natural for a Christian so to judge con- 
cerning the sorrows of his country. No nation ever 
became great without civil, war, revolution and re- 
bellion. These are the maladies, which the system, 
if able, will throw off; and if it cannot throw them 
off, if it is of too feeble a constitution to stand a 
fever or a pleurisy, the sooner it dies the better. We 
think that God has work for us to do, "because He 
thus visits us. We think that He is framing and 



12 SERMON. 

fashioning us for some very high and worthy ends. 
We are in His hands as clay in the hands of the pot- 
ter; and He, we hope, is moulding us large and strong 
for His purposes. The blows that are inflicted upon 
us by lawless hands do but compress us together 
more closely; and if foreign force should be added 
to the present weight upon us, let us trust that such 
assaults would but knit the material into still more 
compact form, and harden it like iron. 

All that has come upon us is the sign of our ac- 
ceptance, and the omen of our coining strength. The 
red light now kindling in a semicircle round the land, 
is nothing more than as a morning glow upon the sky: 
the fires are not those, of the sunset; rather are they 
the ruddy harbingers of increasing light, and strewed 
with hopeful radiance upon the angry clouds. All 
the day, with its twelve hours of useful, honorable, 
and godly labour, lies, let us hope, in our now shad- 
owy future; and the drums, as they beat each morn- 
ing along our whole front, on sea and land, are sound- 
;, to the ear of faith, the reveille" of a great era of 
national prosperity and advance. And let not our 
hope and trust be cheeked by allusions to the divers 
disasters of the time; by reference to the business 
broken up, and the institutions which have gone by 
the board, and the associations which have been in- 
terrupted, and the harmonious relations which have 
come to an end. It is all true. But yet, even there, 
one must feel and say thai the suddenness of these 
c ollapses proves the poorness of the si nil'. Why shall 
we regret thai which was so weak that the first 
rough Btroke shivered it todusl \ When we see hov. 
easily, how instantly, much that we depended on and 



SERMON. 13 

trusted to lias been turned to destruction, we suspect 
that it could not have been worth the keeping. As 
a churchman, I blush with shame at the sight of a 
reverend father in God transforming: himself into a 
military commander — throwing aside his bishop's 
habit and his pastoral keys and staff, and, awkwardly 
and most revoltingly, assuming the dress and weapons 
of carnal warfare. But, at the same time, the thought 
must come, that if a bishop were capable of such an 
act, the sooner we know it of him the better. And 
if it be true that the bonds of church unity have 
been broken, and that a schism has actually occurred 
in our communion, what more clear than this, that 
the feeling of church unity which we thought to 
have existed did not exist, and that we have been 
nattering ourselves over a delusion % Brethren, what 
we all of us want, in practical life, is, not fair-weather 
friendship, not formal courtesies, not sunshine com- 
fort. We want what has firmness, and endurance, 
and truth ; friendship which is stronger in evil report 
than in good ; strength to resist the storm ; light for 
the rainy day ; the real, the true, the honest, the reli- 
able, on which to lean, and in which to rest. And 
if there were which promised all this, and yet, in the 
very moment of affliction and adversity, failed us, 
when first we felt our need of it, better that we knew 
at once the real emptiness, the real hollowness and 
insincerity of the whole grand imposture. If this 1 >e 
all, if this be the true character of the idol, why, we 
are well rid of it, and, in Heaven's name, let it go ! 

But to return to the objects for which this day has 
been set apart — to the duty of giving thanks to God 
Almighty for the fruits of the earth and all the other 



14 SEEM ON". 

blessings of His merciful providence. Let me, in 
drawing these reflections to a close, allegorize some- 
what, if this may be permitted, upon one of these 
expressions. The fruits of the earth ; the seed-time 
and the harvest. Brethren, there lies a deep and 
solemn meaning in these words ; we may apply them 
to the nation, and draw from them a moral for the 
hour. This is the seed-time for us. God has up- 
turned the soil ; He has ploughed the land from end 
to end, and laid it open in furrows to the long sun- 
shine of the coming ages, as well as to the rain and 
stormy seasons towards the end of the world. What 
shall be the growth out of this deeply-wrought field ? 
And of what sort shall the harvest be in its times ? 
and of what fashion and quality shall be the fruits 
out of this now reddened earth ? We know not, as 
yet. But still we can hope and trust ; and we can 
also pray. Yea, brethren, on this our thanksgiving 
feast, we can pray for the coming crop, for the har- 
vest in the future, from this rough and thorough til- 
lage of the Lord. We may pray that the first growth 
from the upturned fields shall be the religious fear of 
God ; the first, the strongest, and the most enduring. 
We may pray that the people, taught as by briers 
and scorpion scourges, may learn, throug htrial, the 
grand lesson that the Most High ruleth in the king- 
dom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will. 
Wherever this truth has been acknowledged, the 
people have prospered; and the trouble with us has 
been, that we have not fell this as we ought. We 
have trusted in our own strength, and not in God. 
Now rmisl we learn thai the Lord God is the Ruler, 
above and below. One thinks, in these days, (it 



SEEM ON. 15 

were hard to say why,) but one thinks often of the 
history of the Venetian republic. There, where Ven- 
ice now sleeps, inactive, and unhonoured, in the midst 
of her dull lagoons, there once, in long past days, en- 
throned upon her hundred isles, sat the grandest and 
stateliest republic of Europe. The secret of all that 
glory, now existing but in name, of all the strength 
with which her winged lions were girt, of all the pride, 
and wealth, and honour which made her lustrous to 
the eye of the world ; the secret lay here, that she 
feared God. Venice was the home of liberty; the 
asylum of the oppressed ; the champion of the rights 
of man. She held at bay, with one strong arm, the 
swarthy Turk, as he threatened the religion of the 
Cross ; and with the other, no less resolute, she waved 
back the Bishop-Pope of Rome when he would have 
forced the consciences of Christian men. There flour- 
ished the Arts ; and there rode navies as gallant and 
as daring as our own ; and there, stiff with their gold 
embroidery, floated her proud banners, defiant of the 
foes of human progress. But the secret lay here, 
that Venetia feared the Lord. She was a Christian 
and a religious power. The stateliest of all her shin- 
ing palaces bore on its magnificent front the still 
more magnificent inscription, "Non nobis Domine, 

NON NOBIS, SED NoMINI TlJO DA GLOEIAM !" And that 

was the habitual thought of doge, and senate, and 
army, and navy, and people. Somehow or other, the 
glory of Venice, and its cause, seem to be continu- 
ally recurring and recurring to the thoughts; and 
then, as that inscription on the Vendromini palace 
burns upon the eye of the inner consciousness, the 
wish is felt that those very words might be inscribed 



SEEMOJT 
Id 



Sed tS and .long the iedatripes, and through 
fine field those words: "Not unto us, O I*>rd 

• i f o^rl law "Not unto us, O Lord, but unto my 

Se« tWn the cloud, and the .smoke, and the 

J ,n And when-this Union shall he reconstnn ed 

S .actshall he restored, and *• ^™*-£ 

I,* rUnetualry secured in its right , wnen 

be perpeiuauy _ d commerce 

Ct^rlS^pat^d when the 
:; ^tnA^r head, and the hittern^and 

as still give glory to God.. ,1 . * 

people shall how the kneft and worship, inej 



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